Pages

Labels

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

My New Station

As I have blogged in past, I have a QTH in Santa Fe, NM. I have 5 acres, but according to the deed restrictions all I can do is look at it. No towers, no antennas, nothing. Since I spend most of my time here activating SOTA summits it's not that big of deal, however from time to time there is something I might miss because I have no HF capability, plus I like to chase SOTA peaks as well and I haven't been able to do that from here.

So with the help of Hector, XE2K, I am now able to work HF from here in a couple of ways. The first challenge was the antenna. While there is strict prohibitions against transmitting antennas, there is nothing prohibiting flagpoles. So I got permission to put up a flagpole. The flagpole I bought was from ZeroFive antennas. I bought the 20 ft. version. which is resonant on 20m with no tuning. I am using 16 43ft. radials However, I also put a SGC remote tuner at the base, which tunes all bands from 10m - 30m. Hector, who is very good at expanding the capabilities of any antenna, suggested we add a radiating wire to the mix. So we cut a 43 ft. piece of wire, attached it to the flag fastener and hoisted it to the top of the pole and tied off the end, in an inverted V configuration. the two antennas now are resonant, with the tuner, 10m - 80m. While it's not optimum, it is functional and now I'm on the air. In the photo below you can see the flagpole and the wire that makes 40m and 80m possible.

Flagpole Antenna

The next HF solution is to remote into my K3 at my home QTH in Texas. So I bought the K3/0 which is the remote radio device along with the RemoteRig interfaces. It is also now functional. So if I need a beam, I have access to that as well. So I am back in business on HF. Below is a look at the station. The K3/0 is on the left and an Icom 7200 on the right.

3 comments:

I have a dipole mounted in my attic in a sort of "Z" configuration. It is definitely a compromise arrangement, but I've worked over 100 countries and all states with it mostly at QRP levels. Chased a lot of SOTA goats, too. Being a CW op does help, too.

About Me

I've been a ham since 1989, and have acheived Top of the Honor Roll and have worked over 1,000 IOTA islands. My next frontier is 160M, 6M, QRP and Summits on the Air.
I also play guitar for The No Refund Band, www.norefundband.com . Check us out if you get a chance. Our latest CD is out on iTunes and Amazon.